Phyletic Gradualism
by aberrantstrain
Summary: Howard/Vince. Post-Party roof-top bickering. Rated for language, possible drug use, Bailey's, and eventual sexual content.
1. Phyletic Gradualism

It's cold enough to freeze my tits off, but I do like it up here. The sky is like a stage, curtains of night pulled back to expose the sparkling vastness of space.

The moon twists its face around on its space-neck to look at me, and I like looking back at it.

"Moon," I say. "What do you think I should do to my hair?"

One time, I used the moon as a giant antenna to receive trans-dimensional messages from Brian-Eno-in-the-past, so we're kind of friends. The moon is helpful and friendly; I played 'Here Come the Warm Jets' for the moon and it liked the album very much. It was pretty good, that.

Genius, really.

I'll bet my hair looks great right now, all gently swaying in the night breezes. I should bring a mirror up sometime. Oh, that might be good! Like John Lennon when he stayed in bed, but on a roof! and with style!

Better hold the Yoko, though.

Being on the roof makes me feel like my bones are thinning out in preparation to take flight. I bet if I tried, I could grow a beak and jump in to the sky and wear the stars like beads of water rolling off my sleek bird body. I did always look pretty fuckin' excellent in feathers.

Someone down in the street below is being loud, sounds like they're having a right good time. "HEY LADY!" the someone calls out saucily, "What you doin' up there?"

"Don't worry about it!" I call back. "I'm not even really here!"

I can hear them stumbling away into the night, leaving only a laugh behind to echo back at me.

The moon smiles down at me- he knows this kind of thing happens all the time.

There's a creak and a thud, and suddenly I am looking in to a pair of beady eyes.

"Vince, What're you doing up here? Are you shouting?"

Howard's face peeps out of the sky-light, and precariously, he climbs up to sit beside me.

"It's so cold!" He says, looking at me. "Don't you want to come down?" His words are white steam syllables, breathy plumes pulled away by the wind. "There's cocoa," He tempts.

"Sure, Howard, I'll come down soon," I tell him, adjusting the tastefully beaded fringe on my lycra Space-Demon suit. The little silvery beads are icy and tinkling. He raises a skeptical eyebrow in inquiry.

"Why are you up here?" He asks. "Naboo's made spaghetti burgers."

"I"m communing with the universe," I explain.

"Ah, and a good place to do it," He agrees, wrapping his arms around his knees.

"Been a long time since you and I were up here together, eh?" He asks, and I smile, but I'm not sure where he means to go with that comment exactly.

Maybe nowhere. It _has _been a while.

Now Howard is musing, I can see it coming on. He gets this kind of strained, inwardly harassed look that I think is supposed to pass for wisdom, and everything he says gets deeply boring.

He has on a muffin colored top and socks with sandals. Jesus, that is just awful, innit? His hair looks nice, though. A bit wild. The just-rolled-out-of-bed look works on him. I'm an excellent hairdresser.

I tune back in and catch something about responsibility and the laying aside of dreams. Such a martyr, he is. "Another year older, another year nearer to death. I'm almost 33 years old, Vince. Alone, a man in his prime." He pauses, looking at me emphatically.

I give him a look. "I know how old you are, Howard. We're the same age," I remind him.

Now its Howard's turn to give me a look. "Wait just a minute, sir. Hold on- Communing with the universe? Admitting your real age? Are you feeling all right?"

It's impossible for me not to smile at his disbelief. "I feel fine!" I tell him, and I'm damn sure not lying. "I'm a mystical kind of person," I tell him. "I can commune with the universe, it's not just for stuffed, jazzy intellectual types. I was just asking the moon what it thinks I should do with my hair. And if that's not mystical.."

Sometimes I think the moon might be the only one who really gets me.

Howard rolls his eyes. "And did the moon tell you its looking a bit like Cher lately?"

"She's really good, Howard, you shouldn't joke about her, well into her 70s and still a right minx." Howard thinks about this for a minute and shrugs. "You could do a lot worse," He admits.

"Oh, and what do you know about it?" I ask, teasing him.

"More than you might think," He alludes.

"Oh, come off it. Everyone knows that I'm the only girlfriend you ever had, and you chucked me, remember?" I tell him. I don't mention Eleanor for Howard's sake.

Howard looks dis-believing for a second. "I didn't chuck you! You were the one that rejected me!"

"Oh, not this again," I sigh, covering my face with my hands.

Howard's face grows stormy. "Oh yes, this again!"

"Have you been waiting to bring this up?" I ask him.

"I should ask you the same thing! Or is that the name of the game with you, toying with a man's emotions? Stringing them along until you have them where you want them?"

"Jesus, Howard! That's silly, I was the one that kissed you! How can I be rejecting you if I'm the one doing the kissing? That isn't how it works!"

Howard began to look a bit crazed in the moonlight. "Exactly! You just swept right in! You loved me and left me, that's what you did," He tells me. "Great confuser, indeed!"

"Left you!? I didn't leave you, I never went anywhere! I'm right fuckin' here!" I want to laugh, but I hold it back. "You said you were over me!"

His thoughts are so insane that it turns my arms in to radical, tie-dyed exclamations points, and then changes them back again. I find them trying to hold him off with 'slow down, get back' kind of gestures.

"And then when I tried to confess my love, you shut me down!" He continued, "Just brushed my feelings off." Howard said. "And it wasn't the first time, either!"

"One kiss doesn't mean anything! Haven't you ever heard anyone say 'A kiss is just a kiss'? I mean, really! I can't believe you're saying this to me!"

"One kiss might not mean anything, but what about a whole life?" He asks me.

"That's bullshit, you won't even let me touch you!"

His tone is makin' me nervous, but I still can't tell if we are joking or if he's talking about something more philosophical. The lines are always kind of blurry between us. Normally I don't mind, but I don't deny that it does take a bit of work on my part, making sure I still know where the lines between us actually are.

"And anyway, if it hadn't been for the head shaman gone ape-shit I never would have in the first place!"

Howard's arms cross over his chest in a defensive manner. He looks wounded.

I sit forward, catching his eyes. "Now let's get this sorted. You were the one that rejected me," I told him. "If you are so broken up, why am I the one that got chucked? That doesn't seem to add up, does it? You didn't have to chuck me. You could have kept me, you know. You're getting thick in your old age."

"If you wanted me to keep you, why would you.." Howard was searching for the right words, I could see out-loud that his brain was failing to communicate. Struggling to regain some semblance of rational speech, his hands clench frustratingly.

"Don't you think there's a reason for all of this?" Howard burst out, and flailed passionately. I grabbed at his wrist to steady him. "Careful! You'll fall again, and there's no bouncy castle this time," I warned.

He took my hand, putting it to his heart dramatically. "Don't you think it all has some greater meaning? You? And me? Together? There has to be a reason that you go out every night with beautiful, interesting people, and still come home to me!"

"What was it again, Howard?" I ask him. I'm trying my best not to smile, hiding my mouth behind my hand, but it's creeping out and up, kidnapping my face until I'm grinning. "The 'molten sexual tension,' was it?"

He just looks at me.

At this point, I can see that I have stumbled on to dangerous ground with him! He really is upset! Right away I felt badly about all of it.

Though, in a curious way, this whole thing does endear him to me. Poor desperate Howard, willing to give himself up to anyone just for the sake of being had.

Sad, that is. Him complaining about how he thinks we should be together. Especially because here I am, going along, thinking we already were together, in our own way! I don't know what to say.

"I don't really know what to say," I tell him.

There are plenty of things I might have said. My braincell is rampaging, stamping around, practically screaming I never should have kissed you!

I should have kissed you before!

If I hadn't of kissed you, I'd be deader than dead!

If you had confidence enough to go after me properly, maybe you'd be worth a real go.

I think green is a great color on you, but not that olive drab shit you wear.

And you could do with some highlights, possibly. Or maybe just one really dandy one in the front.

But I didn't say anything.

Howard's face falls.

"Listen," I told him, gently. "This is how I see it," He blinks, waiting to be brought around. The corner of his mouth twitches, but only the teeniest little bit. But that's a good sign, I can definitely smooth this one over.

"It's always been you and me, yeah? It's you and me this very minute! Howard, all this talking about me leaving you and you chucking me, it's depressing. I don't like it. You have me, and I have you, and really, the only difference between how it is now and how you want it to be is in your mind; the way you're looking at things is what has to change."

Silently, the moon agrees with me. "You see?" I gesture. "The moon agrees with me."

Howard considers this, but I can see it isn't going to be enough.

"What about sex?" He asks me quietly, bitterly. His voice is dark.

"What about it?" I ask, gaping at him.

"Don't be clever," Howard tells me.

"Well, If you can find someone who will sleep with you, I think you right well should!"

"I'm going down," he says, heaving himself up and half-pitching down the roof. I reach after him, poised for disaster to strike. Dangerously, he scrambles back down through the skylight.

"You coming?" he asks begrudgingly.

"I bet you'd like it if I did, yeah?" I ask, smirking. I do know better but I just can't help it!


	2. Twisting Wingwangs

Howard goes to bed early and I sit on the floor with my tea, idly flipping through the latest issue of 'Cheekbone'.

Old hat, this is. It's all about wild pink accents in moderation, and a 'new' electric green that I've already been wearing forever. Guess black is back again, too, though it really is such a staple in any well rounded wardrobe that I don't think it ever technically goes 'out'.

When I come to the end of the magazine I let the glossy pages flop closed.

Its getting late, but I can't bring myself to slink in to our room and crawl to bed quite yet. I feel right tosky after everything on the roof- I've got to do something to change it around, reversing of negative energies and the like.

"That's good, Vince." Naboo comments offhandedly.

"Practicing your telepathy again, yeah?" I ask.

Naboo smiles mysteriously. "Its easy to read your thoughts, Vince, you only have one at a time and you think them very loudly."

He and Bollo puff away comfortably on the hookah, filling the room with a gentle haze of smoke that drifts lazily, trailing itself towards the window, which is open just slightly.

"You know, you don't always have to be a mind reader to see what's going on with a person," Naboo says from beneath the twisting cloth of his deep blue turban. Bollo emerges out of the inner-most folds of his stoned state to grunt in agreement.

"What do you mean?" I ask. I can feel my eyebrows bunching up in dismay. Bad for the skin, this is. I reach up, trying to rub the potential lines away. Better prevention than a cure.

Naboo leans forward on the couch, crossing his arms at the wrist, elbows resting on his knees in a candid manner. From his mouth, a thin stream of deep purple smoke curls up and out.

He exhales and passes the mouth piece to Bollo.

"I'll just put it to you straight." He says. "Now, you know I love you, you're one of my best mates, but you're also a 32 year old man who sleeps in a bedroom with another man and wears women's clothing. I know you could have your pick of just about anyone, but maybe this time you ought to consider picking someone who'se worth picking."

He nods towards the closed door of my -our bedroom.

"You mean Howard?" I whisper in alarm, leaning forward. It's like a conspiracy! I can accept all the rest, there's no harm in the truth, but I was expecting something a bit more profound- 'Let Howard bum you' is terrible advice to give anyone!

"Naboo, you've gone wrong! What has gotten in to everyone?" I look back and fourth between the shaman and his familiar- my friends, my flat mates, my family.

"You've got to be kidding me," I decide. Naboo shrugs and sits back, taking the mouth-piece back from Bollo. "I didn't say you had to do anything." He counters coolly.

"Is that all!? That's not a very helpful suggestion, is it? Naboo, there's got to be something else. Don't you have a potion? Or a balm? Something?"

He considers for a time. "You could smoke some with us, it might clear your head."

"Let's see," I say despairingly, reaching for the mouth piece.

After a few deep pulls from the hookah, I feel the lines relax out of my forehead.

My limbs are warm and tingly like freshly laundered draperies danglin' out a window on a summer day, but my mind feels like a crusty orange bus-station urinal, pissed in by paunchy business men wearing tacky suits.

Though I would never admit it, in some lights I can see how Naboo is sort of right. Howard is my best mate, the moon to my sun, really. We've got an angle. But if it were going to happen with us, wouldn't it have already?

I have a sudden, horrible fear of drifting through the whole journey of my life, flitting about, in love with everyone and no one really and stuck with Howard in the end because I was never interested enough in any one thing or person, just contexts and fashion statements. It's a far stretch, but I still can't let anything of that sort happen.

I deserve more than that and Howard does as well. I feel a sympathetic twisting inside me when I think of all the times he's gotten the short end after he'd given his best.

He should be someone's first choice, not a last resort. But what someone, someone who? I hate watching him try to flirt with women. Me, then? Is he my first choice?

Have I chosen already, and am only just catching up with myself?

Maybe it would be easier to be with Howard, after all was said and done. I think most everyone already thinks that we're together- and I don't even bother correcting them anymore!

But there are also lots of things that don't appeal to me about being with Howard, least of all what a cramp he is on my style. All the jazz and pompous talk. How can anyone on the scene take me seriously if I'm ..dating Howard Moon? Though I am already living with him, and no one has seemed to mind so far.

However, going with Howard isn't something I can take on lightly- it's not the sort of thing that I could change my mind about. Once it's done, it'll be done, like a tattoo or a mobile phone contract or a personal loan agreement. I hear his voice echoing fuzzily in my mind; "It'll be forever, sir!"

It's all too much. I'm fine with confusing other people, but not confusing myself!

"Vince," someone says. I blink my dry, cotton-pom eyes. Naboo is sitting over me, shaking my shoulder and waving a hand in front of my face experimentally.

"Vince, its half past two. You've been sitting here like this for four hours, not speaking, just staring off like.. You alright?"

I look around, taking in my cold cup of tea, the neglected magazines- pink nail varnish chipping off my fingernails. Four hours, really?

"I've got to get some rest," I tell Naboo and Bollo, unzipping my boots and abandoning them beneath the table. With a nod goodnight, I head for the bathroom to brush my teeth and then I make for the oblivion of my bed.

"Think of what I've said," I hear Naboo say as I'm shutting the door behind me.

The room is dark and warm, closed in and a little claustrophobic feeling. Not too badly, but just enough for me to notice. I change out of my Space-Demon suit and slip in to my robe, pausing by the closet, hanger in hand.

I don't want to wake Howard, so I move especially slowly, really creeping along. However, despite my attempts to be silent, Howard rustles in his bed and turns over. I grimace, hearing the creaky bed-frame protest his movement.

"Vince," He whispers.

"Yeh?" I answer reluctantly, frozen where I am just for a second. Like a mistrustful lizard, I make a skittering dash for my side of the room.

"I can actually hear you trying to be quiet," Howard says sharply, but as my eyes adjust to the darkness I think I see a trace of a smile there. "Cut it out," he murmurs. "I'm not asleep yet."

"Sorry, how was I to know?" I sit down on the edge of my bed, sinking in to the softness of the blankets and pillows.

"Howard," I say.

I can hear his breath stir, filling up the silence and the stillness that separates our whispers.

"I don't want to talk about it any more," He says quietly. "Clearly, it doesn't matter as much to you as it does to me."

"Course it does!" I say instantly. "But that doesn't have anything to do with what I was going to say! I was going to say something completely unrelated. It's a separate issue I want to talk about."

"Oh? And what might that be?"

"The man corset," I say. "Do you still have it? From Lester? The brown one, you know?"

"What?" He asks, sitting up. Ah, bless him. Howard's hair is all stuck up on one side, and the street light outside, combined with the mighty, shining power of the moon casts him in a kind of silvery glow, all contrasting yellow and blue shadows. I can see perfectly the shape of his silly little man nipples through the faded paisley pattern of his cotton pajamas. They make me grin like a fool- I want to take them on holiday, get trashed and drive around with them in a tiny foreign car.

"You know, the man corset! Can I borrow it? I've got this idea for a new look, this kind of modern primitive thing, lots of fringe. The man corset would be perfect."

"Sure, whatever you want," He says flatly. He looks at me then, fluffs his pillow, and turns over deliberately, lying back down.

"Howard," I say again. I don't want him to go to bed angry, I hear it's terrible for you. Plus, I do rather love to pester him.

"What?!" He asks, shoulders bunching up beneath his blanket. "What is it?"

"I was thinking about what you said earlier, on the roof. You'd said that it wasn't the first time I'd brushed you off, but if you're talking about that time in the tundra when you told me you loved me, I did tell you that I loved you back. I did."

"Was that before or after you laughed at me?" He asks.

"I was caught off guard, is all. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Even thinking about it now makes me want to have a giggle. It made me happy." I pause, thoughts leaping.

"Well, it didn't make me happy! And I won't be baited by you! I said I didn't want to talk about it!"

"But Howard! We've got to talk about it. I can't get to sleep with all this hanging over my head. 'Cheekbone' says that stress is one of the biggest contributing factors of premature wrinkle development."

Howard sits up again with a resigned sigh and clicks on the little lamp next to his bed. This time, the hair on the other side of his head is rebelling, jutting up and out in a wild display of personal protest.

Howard rubs his eyes, acting as though he'll never get to sleep now, but I don't feel badly because he wasn't asleep to begin with!

"What else is there to say?" He asks.

"Knowing you, plenty!" He makes it so easy!

For a second I forget what it is we're supposed to be talking about- Howard's hair is well distracting. If only that one little piece was pushed back, It's driving me mad!

Lookit him, trying to be grumpy, maybe to remind me that he's still hurt. I can't take him seriously while his hair is doing that, but I want to. I'm trying to.

It doesn't matter anyway, how much he pouts, I know he'll stay up all hours with me. Suddenly, I'm excited. I love these kinds of nights! Passing out in a wreckage of sweet wrappers and papers and coffee cups at 6 AM with the sun coming through the window, fucking genius.

"I Think I see a wrinkle forming, Vince, just there,' Howard says after a minute, pointing with his finger. This gets my attention, filthy lies. He's got a tiny little smile ghosting around his face.

"Don't be cruel," I tell him, moving to sit with him on the edge of his bed. I tie off my flowery bath robe (got it for free! can you believe that?) and Howard pulls his legs up to make room for me.

"You know I don't look a day over twenty."

I lean against the wall and peer at him through my deflated fringe. I'm trying to see him the way a stranger would see him, finding things I like about him without seeing the same old things I've always liked.

"C'mere," I motion with a nod of my head. He cocks his head questioningly and I motion again, a flicker of movement, encouraging him with my eyebrows.

He leans forward and bravely, I reach out and tuck back the offending strand of hair, smiling. That's so much better.

His eyes are curious, searching me. I let my arm drop. My fingertips brush his wrist, but only the tiniest little bit.

"Your hair's a mess," I tell him softly.

He's quiet and I'm quiet and it feels different. We're sitting very close. I poke his knee with my finger, picking at tear in the old quilting.

"What're we doing?" he asks me softly. I'm pretty sure he means this rhetorically, but..

"I'm not sure," I breathe out.

"You've got hippie breath. Vince," he says, "Are you high?" He sits back and peers at me with new scrutiny.

"A bit?" My smile gives me away so I try to hide it behind my hand. "I think I'm more hungry, now, than anything else."

The little spell is broken. He yawns and nods.

"You want something?" I ask after a bit.

Howard considers. "I could do with something," he says.

"Great! While you're up will you grab me some crisps and the rest of that chocolate bar?"

Howard glares at me, but he's playing. "Oh, I'll get you for that one," he promises, pushing the covers back and swinging his legs out of bed. "When you least expect it, my retribution will come sweeping down upon you, oh, yes sir."

When he goes, I call out after him. "And a banana, too!"


	3. A dream and a sleep

The sky is made from bits of aluminum foil, pink sequins and blue vinyl, but by the time I've noticed its already changed again and become blue painted cardboard with orbiting paper plate planets stuck on; a cozy universe created with cell-o-tape and toothpicks and paper napkins, springing up around me like a junk drawer universe come to life.

The earth is made of biros writing things of their own accord on lined paper and my paws make a kind of soft vellum sound when I step, like the turning of a page.

I am a stripey-solid, plaid-polkadot monster hunting wild Howard antelopes across the waste paper basket plains, ravenously hungry but unable to catch any of them.

The predator in me longs to make the kill, and do what my instinct says I should, but the plaid parts of me aren't having it- they want a rest and a drink and a nap by a gently flowing stream.

I am a clashing question mark of a creature waiting for an answer from myself.

I see the silly hats and mustaches of the Howard antelopes bobbing up and down through the tops of the gently shifting, waxy candlestick grass. My heart is a slam dancing teenager, a riot of color in love with the thrill of the game but uncertain what to do with the prize once I've won.

The Howard antelopes dash out, their avacado and burnt ochre 1970s abstract patterned skins leaping away from the gnashing passes of my teeth, gone pointy and ill-tempered with starvation.

I can see the smell of them on the air, all tweedy and musty like a library book, but spicy and hot, too, like a garlic and onion armpit sandwich.

I follow the angry muffin colored scent of them over the line of the horizon, biro scribbles pulling themselves up in to something out of the vast white paper nothingness of my subconscious mind, becoming trees and vague impressions of mountains which might also be mounds of wet washing.

The Howard antelopes are so graceful- their movement is like a kind of dance. They mesmerize me and lure me, pulled by the growling in my stomach, but they're always just out of my reach, popping away at the exact moment I think I'll finally get one!

I pump my psychedelic legs, running shamelessly, endlessly after them, watching them scatter and recollect like magnetized pencil shavings.

The scribble trees roll along the page with me, and they sing lonely love songs to the wind, songs of feasting beasts and full bellies and sleeping safe in the warm crook of someone's arm because that's where you belong at.

I am exhausted from running, even the trees can't keep up any longer. The plaid parts of me are protesting out-right: I want a song to sing, a feast and a place to belong, they say to me.

I smooth myself out like a wrinkled shirt and lie down in the candle grass, the candy floss webs of the popcorn spiders sticking in my wild mane, decorating me with their glistening, sugary threads.

There's a crunchy rustle in the brush, a ripple of movement through the air, and a lone Howard antelope steps forward through the grass. Its tiny eyes are blinking, mustache twitching- unassuming, grazing, delicious.

Without a second thought, I pounce.


	4. Punctuated Equilibrium

"If it isn't the sunshine kid, up bright and early," Howard says from the sofa. He moves the Sunday paper he's been reading out of the way and I make a place for myself beside him.

"You won't believe the dream I had, Howard, it was wild! Literally, I was this mad fashion beast and-"

"That sounds a bit like every day life, doesn't it?" He interrupts wryly.

I don't get around to telling him about the antelopes or the paper plate planets, plus it might be a bit weird so I just let it go. I'll tell the moon, instead.

"You're just jealous that you haven't got what it takes to be an icon."

He looks at my silver sparkly boots and smiles pityingly.

"You might be an 'icon', but you lack subtlety. You're unable to grasp the finer art of nuance." His lecture is broken off by a hasty smile.

"And anyway, every time I look at you now, all I'm going to see is you curled up, drooling in to my armpit and kicking your legs about in the bed like a retard."

"No! You're mixed up!" I tell him. "I don't remember that!"

In spite of my own horror, this does make me laugh. His comment stirs a vague memory in me of being too hot, robe and limbs twisted up in too many blankets, wrapped in a pair of pale noodle arms, hip nestled in to the warmth of.. something.

"Well, you wouldn't, would you, sleeping beauty?" He asks me, smirking. "Out like a light, you were." Howard snaps his fingers. "I had to take the banana away from you," He tells me.

"So that wasn't what I was feeling all night?" I fire off smartly.

Howard shifts a little, blushing. "I don't know what you mean, sir," He mumbles indignantly, looking away.

"Howard, it's alright! I already know you love me," I tease him. "It's only natural, innit?"

He squirms, going all red in the face, crossing and uncrossing his arms over his chest.

Just to make it worse, I move in close to him, fingers poking, and put my head on his shoulder. "You've gone all red, Howard! You know what they say! No smoke without fire!" I crow.

"If I give you fifty Euro will you give me the Howard Moon special?"

"Don't touch me," He warns unhappily, moving my hands away.

A part of me feels like it's still all a joke, but another part of me, most likely the plaid parts, whisper hungrily: A song, a feast, a place!

"Oh? I'll touch you if I well please!" I tell him defiantly, grabbing his wrists and throwing a leg over his knees. "You weren't complaining last night, were you?"

He pulls his arms away and clenches them towards his body. "I said 'don't touch me!'" He reiterates.

I jab at his ribs with stabby fingers, trying to tickle, making him twist about. In his struggle to get away, he leans close to me for a second, and I take the initiative once again.

"Next time, have courage enough to make the first move, yeah?" I tell him boldly.

When Howard looks at me, his eyes are narrower than usual, but for a second I see them flash with a certain kind of clarity. "You really do mean it, don't you?" He asks, somewhere near disbelief, hovering just to the left side of wonderment. Howard's very sensitive- I've always known, of course, but now I have a better appreciation for it.

A laugh, a sideways look, anything can set him off, cripple his sensibilities.

Before I can really answer, I hear someone on the stair and Naboo appears.

Howard shoves me off of him in a kind of frenzy, pushing me backwards on to my side of the couch with right force, and, in an almost-hysterical attempt to compose himself, crosses his legs tightly.

The whole thing is so sudden that all I can do is huff and adjust my hair, trying to act natural, hopefully to counter balance How ridiculous Howard is being.

"All right, you lot?" Naboo asks, surveying the scene between us with a small smile.

"All right, Naboo," Howard says, picking up his newspaper and fidgeting with it awkwardly.

"I've just come to get some records," Naboo says. "I'm on my way back out. Found this outside the shop, though." He sets a bottle of Bailey's down on the table with a heavy 'thunk' and disappears in to the recesses of the flat.

"Excellent! I love Bailey's!" I lean forward to inspect if it's been opened or not.

Howard sits forward as well, but he looks unsettled.

"You aren't going to drink that, are you?" He asks apprehensively.

"Sure I am!" I say, grinning. "It isn't even open! Put a bit in my coffee? It'll be delicious."

"Vince, no. I don't think it would be a good idea." Howard's getting paler by the minute.

"What's the matter?" I ask, waving the bottle at him. "You don't like Bailey's?"

He shakes his head gravely.

Naboo reappears, clutching a battered copy of 'Husk' on vinyl under his left arm.

"I'm off. Stay out of trouble, you two," He says, and then he puts his hands on his hips like a mean granny. "And?" He asks, eyeing Howard and I both.

Resentfully, Howard and I mutter our prompted response in unison, like naughty children being held responsible for our actions. Howard looks away while I stare at my boots, toeing at the leg of the coffee table.

"If you make a mess, clean it up.."

Naboo flashes us a beatific smile and is gone again.

Two hours later we're a teensy bit pissed and I'm rocking the man-corset like a fierce bitch.

"How can you 'not believe' in it?" Howard asks me exasperatedly. He's fixing coffee cocktails, and I watch him empty the last of the Bailey's in to my Mick Jagger coffee cup. Steadily, he crosses the room with our drinks and settles on his end of the couch.

"I can 'not believe' in it because it isn't real!" I answer, reaching to take my mug.

"Just because it doesn't technically exist doesn't mean that it never will. We might not have the technology yet, but space lifts are the wave of the future, oh yes."

"Maybe the reason it doesn't exist is because you can't just take a lift to space!" I tilt an eyebrow at him saucily and take a big drink. Seems to me like the answer's in the question.

"You know this is mostly Bailey's?" I ask.

"Try mine," He says. We switch mugs, and I find that Howard's is mostly Bailey's as well.

"Here, you have this one back." He says after a minute. "I don't like drinking out of Mick Jagger, it feels creepy."

"I love it," I say, licking the rim of my mug and leering at him suggestively before I set it down.

"You would," He counters, looking at me sideways.

"Massive gayist," I accuse casually, leaning my head back against the arm of the couch and stretching out, putting my silvery Bowie boots all over Howard's tweedy legs, leaving glitter in the scratchy weave. I close my eyes and yawn.

I feel his weight shifting on the sofa, and when I lift my head again I see him half-leaning, all sneakily, two pinched fingers pulling ever so slowly at one end of the lacing on the man corset.

"Hey, what's all this?" I ask, siting up. "Oh, Don't undo my lacings! They took forever!" Howard moves again, so he's sitting under my knees and the backs of my thighs now, and he reaches out a hand to push me back down, playfully. I open my mouth, half in surprise, half in possible complaint, but he's got a look about him that I've not seen before and I don't want to stop him.

The cozy, day-in-at-home atmosphere changes all at once and the whole flat is rippling with electricity, a white hot fire that seems to be coming in waves off my skin.

Our alone-ness is suddenly tantalizingly, achingly exciting to me.

With a tiny tug, the knot at the top of the corset comes undone. I make a small, disapproving sound, looking at him in the hopes of catching his eyes with mine.

Howard smiles at me but only holds my gaze for a second or two- he's busy working out how the laces go, pulling the lace out through one eyelet first, and then the other, tugging the corset open as he goes. Methodically, he undoes the lacing entirely, bit by bit, his fingertips grazing my skin as he peels me out of it.

By the time the corset is off, left unceremoniously on the floor, my breath is catching in my throat and there's nothing I can do to hide the insane size of my erection. Slowly, Howard runs a hand up my thigh, tracing small circles over my hip with his careful touch.

"Howard," I say, softly, reaching out to touch his hair, to stroke the line of his jaw with a finger.

"Is this courage enough?" He asks me quietly, planting scratchy mustache kisses on my stomach. Involuntarily, my hips buck up toward his kissing lips, and he takes the opportunity to move, so he's lying between my legs, pressing his own erection up against me, all heat and force.

We're kissing, and it's so good- better than I'd ever imagined it might be. Howard grinds against me and I moan in to his mouth, seeing stars.

I can't keep his lips on mine the way I want to; his kisses wander down my chest, a desperate tongue searching me out while frenetic hands strip me out of the rest of my clothes.

His mouth is hot and wet and immediately I try to think of something that will keep me from going straight over the edge. Floppy clown shoes! Cheese toast! Big, Mexican pinatas!

Christ, nothing is working!

I can only manage to think of him, think of what he's doing, which brings me even closer.

I'm crooning, tangling my fingers in his hair. My head explodes and begins to float away with the realization- this is real. This is happening.

The plaid parts of me are singing, feasting in celebration of their place, finally found.

"Oh, God! Howard!"


End file.
